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Layering On a New Flavor

By Edward Schneider February 4, 2010 4:05 pmFebruary 4, 2010 4:05 pm

As a New Yorker born in the middle of the 20th century, I come from a place and time where lasagna was without fail made of dried pasta layered with red meat sauce and ricotta, along with the inevitable mozzarella and parmesan. It wasn’t until I first visited Italy, in my 20s, that I encountered lasagne (note the shift from “lasagna” in the singular, describing the whole dish in Little Italy fashion, to “lasagne” in the plural, referring to the sheets of pasta that are its defining ingredient) based on egg pasta, ragù bolognese and béchamel sauce. It seemed very sissified at the time, but somehow it came to be my standard, perhaps simply because it is a more satisfactory dish. I still occasionally make ricotta/red sauce lasagna, but most of the time the lasagne that come out of our oven are more in a Bolognese than a Calabrian vein.

My wife, Jackie, and I had a pasta lesson the other day. Her cooking is excellent — she’s got a far better palate than I do and a thousand times more patience — but there are techniques she doesn’t know because I’ve always hogged them for myself. I talked her through making two eggs’ worth of pasta in the food processor, then through rolling it into strips on a hand-cranked machine, then through layering the strips with ragù, mozzarella, parmesan and … not béchamel sauce.

And not ricotta either: this was more than a lesson; it was an innovation session. I’d been thinking that morning about an alternative that would be just as creamy and elegant as béchamel but — well, not béchamel. Maybe something with a little more inherent flavor. I mentally went through the list of what we were likely to find at the Union Square farmers’ market on a Saturday in January, and stopped dead in my virtual tracks when I got to the Paffenroth Gardens stand. My mind’s eye was caught by one of the things at which this grower excels: celeriac, a real favorite of ours for its clear but restrained flavor.

And, when poached in milk and thoroughly obliterated in the blender, it makes a silky-smooth puree that might, I thought, be a terrific stand-in for béchamel.

We dragged ourselves down to the market late enough that Milk Thistle Dairy was out of cream and Flying Pigs Farm out of practically everything, but happily there were a few — exactly half a dozen — knobs of celeriac left at Paffenroth. So we bought one. I peeled it, cut it into chunks and simmered it in salted milk until it was soft, maybe seven minutes. I blended it into luxurious smoothness, along with a little of the hot milk and just a teaspoonful of butter, then set this aside until Jackie was ready to assemble the lasagne: my work was done.

She repeatedly layered parboiled pasta, ragù bolognese (there was some in the freezer), fresh mozzarella, parmesan and celery root puree, carefully seasoning every layer and being very stingy with all the ingredients — except the pasta, which of course is the point of the dish. (Then it was 40 minutes in a 375-degree oven — covered for the first 20.)

But however stingy she might have been, that celery root sang out. It had the sweetness and consistency of béchamel, and a stand-up flavor that was distinctive and also worked beautifully with the other elements.

We’ll do this again soon, maybe with other vegetables such as parsnips (more sweetness) or rutabagas (peppery and funky) — might be wonderful. And Jackie will certainly be at the helm: she’s a natural.